by JoAnn Ross
“Shit.” He released her, grabbed a lid, and covered the pan to cut off the oxygen, then opened the windows, letting in a blast of frosty air as he began trying to wave the smoke out with a dish towel.
“I tried to tell you,” she said, retying the robe.
“So you did.” He sighed and shook his head as he took her in. Shadows like bruises darkened the skin beneath her eyes, her dark honey hair was a wild tangle around her shoulders, and there was a coffee stain down the front of that pink robe. None of which stopped her from looking hot as hell. “I guess you’re off the hook for the hash browns.”
“But not the snowshoeing.”
“Not on a bet. I promised you a Christmas tree hunt and that’s exactly what you’re getting.
“Or,” he suggested, with a wag of his brows, “we could stay here and spend the day in bed.”
“You want me.” She was obviously pleased by that idea.
“Nah. I’m just horny as a goat and you’re the only female I happen to be snowbound with.”
She laughed at that, as he’d meant her to. Then held her mug out to him. “Get me some more hot coffee, and you should know that I take my eggs scrambled with my bacon. I’ll be back as soon as I change into something more suitable for trudging through the snow.”
“You’re going to wear that pink parka, right?”
“Since it’s the only one I brought, yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because I like it.” He decided, since they were getting along so well, to go for broke. “When I saw you wearing it at the pier the afternoon of the boat parade, I thought you looked like a sugarplum.” His smile was quick and wolfish. “Good enough to eat.”
As pleasure flooded into her unguarded eyes, Cole decided that when he got back to town, he was going to send his grandparents on that Greek cruise they’d always talked about. Because he figured he owed them. Big-time.
16
Although she’d been admittedly less than enthusiastic about the snowshoe outing, Kelli couldn’t deny that being out in the forest, walking through the heavily snow-frosted trees, was exhilarating.
She was also grateful for the yoga and Zumba classes that kept her able to keep up with Cole, as he seemed determined to drag her all around the lake, searching for the perfect tree.
At least she’d probably burned off a gazillion calories. Or this morning’s bacon.
“I love snow.” The sun was streaming through the trees, making it sparkle like a white carpet of diamonds. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
“Says the woman whose car was stuck in a ditch.”
She smiled sweetly. “Fortunately, I had you to pull it out for me.”
She stopped a moment later when a particular tree caught her eye.
“Something wrong?” he asked, turning around when he realized she was no longer behind him.
“Nothing. I think I found it.”
“You’re kidding.” He stared at the tree in question. “It looks like Charlie Brown’s tree.”
“That’s what I like about it,” she said. “It has character.”
“And very few limbs. And the ones it does have are crooked.”
She shook her head and folded her arms across the front of her parka. “I never would’ve taken you for a tree snob. If you want a perfect tree, you should’ve bought one from my family’s farm.”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” he countered. “But looking like an actual tree would be a plus.”
“I like it.”
He angled his head. “You really mean that.”
“Of course I do. All it needs is a few decorations and it’ll be perfect.”
He shrugged. “If you want it, you’ve got it.”
She grinned, feeling foolishly happy. It was a homely tree. Which was exactly what she liked about it. Anyone, even people in Hawaii, could have a perfectly shaped Christmas tree. This one was unique.
“Thank you.” She lifted her smiling lips to his, getting in one lovely nip before he broke away to get the hatchet and saw from the sled he’d brought along to cart the tree back to the cabin.
She wasn’t surprised that he managed to topple the tree and tie it to the sled in less than ten minutes.
“I think I have a new fantasy,” she said.
“Other than George Bailey?”
“Oh, he’s not a fantasy.” She waved away that idea. “Fantasies are for cowboys and pirates and sailors.”
He stopped in the process of securing the hatchet on top of the tree. “Sailors? You fantasize about sailors?”
Ha! She knew that would get under his skin. “How could a girl not? Those snazzy dress whites, a girl in every port, those big, big ships.” She heaped a double helping of innuendo on the word “big.” “If you get my drift.
“And SEALs.” She fanned herself as if just the idea of a Navy SEAL was enough to make her swoon. “They’re like the ultimate sailors.”
“You fantasize about freaking frogmen.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“You’re jealous.” And didn’t she just love it?
“Of a SEAL frogman? No way.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Because, as I said, I’ve discovered a new fantasy. Thanks to you.” Her lips curved in a siren’s smile that had Donna Reed only pulled out in Bedford Falls, George Bailey never would’ve considered jumping off that bridge. She pulled off a glove and chewed thoughtfully on a fingernail as she treated him to a slow, judicial, up-and-down study. “I never realized a lumberjack could be so sexy hot.”
She walked over to him, belatedly realizing it was really hard to glide seductively while wearing a pair of snowshoes. “And speaking of hot.” She ran that fingernail around his lips. “As soon as we get back to the cabin, I’m going thaw out in the hot tub.” His jaw tightened as she trailed her fingers around it. “While I fantasize about getting manhandled by some sexy mountain man.”
She could tell from the way Cole’s eyes went all dark and hooded that he was right there with her. Wanting to drive him as crazy as he’d left her last night, she licked her lips, which she feared would be unappealing and chapped if they didn’t get back to the cabin soon.
It worked!
The hatchet fell to the snow, forgotten, as he pulled her to him. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” His voice was rough and ragged, growled from deep in his throat.
“I’m trying to seduce you.” She smiled up at him. “Is it working?”
Pulling her in for a passionate embrace, he pressed her tight against him.
Oh my. She was not going to faint, Kelli assured herself. The only reason her head had suddenly gone light and all the air had whooshed out of her lungs was because they were at such a high altitude.
“If you don’t do something soon, I’m going to have no choice but to murder you,” she warned him. “With your own ax.”
He laughed at that even as he rotated his hips. Even through all the layers of under- and outerwear, she had no trouble feeling exactly how much mountain manliness he was promising her.
“Then we’d better get going,” he said. “Before I’m forced to take you right here. In a snowdrift.”
“We’d get frostbite,” she said as they followed their tracks back to the cabin.
“Good point. Change in plans. I’ll ravish you on a bearskin rug in front of a blazing fire.”
“You don’t have a bearskin rug.”
“Hey, you women aren’t the only ones allowed to fantasize.”
Although Kelli donated to the Sierra Club, she couldn’t deny that the fur rug, as a fantasy, had its appeal.
“Then I guess we’re back to the manly lumberjack. Who’s worked all day chopping down forests with his manly ax. Which is why he has to work out the kinks in the bubbling hot tub.”
Pulling the sled with one hand, he reac
hed out with his free one, lacing their gloved fingers together. “Sweetheart, you had me at kink.”
17
They didn’t make it to the hot tub. At least not right away.
They’d no sooner entered the cabin when their lips crashed together, tongues tangling and desperate hands ripping at clothes.
Even as parkas, sweatshirts, and thermal underwear went flying, their hands were never still. Cole’s mouth plundered, streaking over every bit of newly bared flesh as she strained against him, wrapped around him, her own hands as greedy as his.
“If you want me to stop, Kelli, tell me now,” he said as he yanked off her snowy boots so he could rid her of those pink ski pants that had pooled around her ankles.
“Don’t you dare,” she said breathlessly, lifting her hips as he hooked his thumbs in the lace waistband of her reindeer panties and ripped them away. “I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment.”
Despite his brain feeling as if it were going to explode, Cole managed to remember the condoms. Which were, unfortunately, in his shaving kit on the bathroom counter.
“Where are you going?” she asked, grabbing his wrist as he started to stand up.
“Condoms,” he managed, thinking that if he had planned a military mission as badly as he had this one, he never would have made it home to be naked with this woman.
“It’s okay. I’m okay. Seriously,” she promised. “And I’m on the pill.”
With any other woman, he might doubt her claims. But not this one.
“Me too,” he said. Which was totally true. He hadn’t had sex with any woman since his last physical, and the Marine doctor had tested him.
“Well, then.” She went to work, pulling the sweatshirt over his head. Just when Cole was certain he’d go insane with hunger for her, they were finally naked, stretched out in front of the fire, not on the fantasized soft bear rug, but on another of his grandmother’s braided rag ones.
Her body was lush and curvy and perfectly made for a man’s hands. And mouth. He lifted her breasts, and as her fingers splayed on the back of his head, he feasted, his teeth and tongue creating a trail down her torso, over her stomach, which quivered as his tongue glided over it, then lower still.
Her short nails dug into his back and she arched her back like a bow as he brought her to the edge. Again and again until finally, with one quick, slick stroke of his tongue, he felt her shatter.
But still it wasn’t enough. Not for him. And not for her.
“I want you inside me,” she said. “I need you.”
Not as much as he needed her. The staggering truth, which hit Cole’s brain like an ax blow, was that he wanted Kelli Carpenter more than he wanted to live.
He pushed her knees up, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist.
Although he’d been picturing this in his mind since the boat parade, even as he’d struggled to safely wall off the mental images of sex in a million ways with her, Cole wanted to watch Kelli come.
But he didn’t have to tell her to look at him, because once again, they were on the same wavelength.
Her eyes were locked on to his as he filled her slowly, giving her time to adjust to his size—which her long, happy sigh assured him lived up to her fantasy mountain man—before he began to move.
Faster. Deeper. Until he was taking her, claiming her, watching her incredible eyes glaze over.
When she came, the deep climax ripping a choked sob from her throat, Cole was right behind her, his mind emptying right before he collapsed onto her.
“That was . . . wow,” she murmured.
“Yeah. But . . .” He glanced around at the clothes strewn all over the room. “We didn’t make it to the hot tub.”
“Next time,” she said on another blissful sigh as she cuddled up against him like a warm kitten.
“Which would be now,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, then pulling her up as well.
“Oh. My.” Her eyes widened as they took in the hard-on that, having been deprived for so many months, was ready for round two.
“Forget the lumberjack.” He tried to shield her from the cold blast of frigid air that hit them as they walked out the door onto the deck and he flipped open the cover on the hot tub. “Along with the damn SEAL frogmen and sailors. If you want real stamina, sweetheart, call a Marine.”
“Ooh-rah,” she said as she slid into the hot water.
“Exactly.” He sat down on a bench and pulled her onto his lap facing him as he lowered her onto his erection. “The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.”
18
Kelli woke the next morning to an empty bed. The bed where Cole had spent much of the night making such slow, sweet love to her, he’d actually made her weep. The sheets on his side were cold, revealing he’d been up for a while.
When she heard the steady thunk, thunk, thunk, she understood why.
And this time her tears were not from joy, but for whatever demons he’d brought home with him that seemed to be keeping him from sleep.
Part of her wanted to ask. Another, stronger part decided that he’d tell her when he felt safe with her. And in order for that to happen, she was going to have to practice patience.
After all, she’d waited for Cole her entire life. She already had so much more of him than she’d had only two days ago. What would a little more time hurt?
The next three days passed in a gilt-edged blur. They’d slipped back into their old friendship, something she’d feared they’d lost forever, as they decorated her foolish little tree, played in the snow like children, made love in that oversized, lion-footed bathtub, watched the sappy movies that would always make her weep and sigh with pleasure, and when they weren’t doing those things, they were making love in every way possible. And a few Kelli hadn’t, even in a million years, imagined.
“I just realized,” she said, as they sat in front of the fire, watching the dancing flames as Bing Crosby crooned about missing a white Christmas. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“So it is.” He drew her mouth to his and kissed her with an easy familiarity gained from a great deal of practice over the past few days.
“I promised my mother I’d open one of my presents tonight. So it’d feel like our family was all together.”
The gifts were under the lighted tree. “Which one?” he asked as he crouched down.
“The silver one. From the dress shop.”
When he handed it to her, Kelli found herself wishing that she’d thought to buy him something. But they hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms when they’d parted after the holiday program.
She carefully took off the silver wrapping, then folded back the tissue paper. “Oh,” she breathed as she held up the white silk nightgown. “It’s obvious my mother was in on the subterfuge.”
“Apparently.” His took in the silk pooling over her hands. “Are you going to try it on for me?”
“Absolutely.” Feeling a strange modesty at odds with the nudity she’d grown comfortable with around Cole, she took it into the bedroom, stripped off her robe—she’d quit wearing the flannel pajamas because he’d certainly provided her with enough heat—and felt it skim over her body like a silken waterfall.
“Oh wow.” She looked at herself in the mirror. It was almost as if a stranger were looking back at her. The perky kindergarten teacher had vanished, leaving in her place the type of siren portrayed in all those movies that were her second-favorite genre behind holiday ones. Rita Hayworth, Susan Hayward, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, all wrapped up into one sexy silk package. The kind of woman who could treat a man wrong and make him beg for more.
Enjoying that idea, she fluffed her hair with her hands. Dug through her cosmetic bag and located a scarlet-as-sin lipstick she’d bought on a whim for the Christmas program, only to chicken out at the last minute. Wishing she h
ad a pair of the marabou mule slippers sexy seductresses in those films always seemed to wear with their filmy negligees, she decided she had no choice but to go with bare feet.
Taking a deep breath, she channeled an inner temptress she’d begun to discover lurking inside her, and opened the door.
Cole was rearranging the fire while sipping from a glass of brandy when she walked toward him on her closest approximation of a siren’s glide.
“Merry Christmas, Santa baby,” she purred, as Bing gave way to Eartha Kitt.
“It is, indeed, that,” he managed after choking slightly on the brandy. “You look amazing.”
“Do you think so?” She skimmed her hands down her body, from her breasts to her thighs, drawing his attention to curves only days earlier she would have wanted to try to hide.
“Actually, amazing is a serious understatement.” He sat down in a brown leather chair and made a twirling motion with his finger. She turned slowly, revealing the way the nightgown bared her back to below the waist, accentuating the flare of her butt.
“So, Kelli . . .” His voice had slid into the rough, sexy timbre that she could feel vibrating inside her. “Have you been good?” he asked as she turned around. “Or bad?”
She tilted her head coyly and looked up at him through her lashes. “Aren’t I supposed to be sitting on your lap to answer that question?”
“Absolutely.” As he took her hand and settled her onto his lap, Kelli could feel his arousal and finally understood what had allegedly kept Adèle and Bernard Douchett together for half a century. She knew that she’d certainly never tire of making love to this man.
“Well?” he asked.
“Aren’t you going to give me my candy cane?”
“You know how it works.”
“Well then.” She sighed. “I guess, since I can’t lie to Santa—”
“It would be ill advised,” he agreed.
“I’d have to say I’ve been bad.” She wiggled a bit, knowing exactly what she was doing to him. “So bad, you might even say I’m good.”